Speaker Robin Vos on Wisconsin Politics Going Into 2025

Frederica Freyberg:
As we sat down with Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for an end-of-year interview, senior political reporter Zac Schultz started by asking him about the Abundant Life shooting.

Zac Schultz:
Mr. Speaker, let’s start with the tragedy at Abundant Life this week. Is there a legislative response that you think should be brought forth in a bill?

Robin Vos:
Well, first of all, my sympathies and what a heartbreaking situation. It’s just awful. And one of the things that I always try to do in these situations is, first of all, wait for all the facts. You know, I have news reports. I’ve read things, but I don’t know what’s real and what’s not. So first of all, I think that in a lot of these cases, it’s almost impossible to think what could be done differently, you know, looking backwards. It’s sounds to me like far too often it’s a troubled teen who perhaps was bullied or had issues at school and that’s awful. We’ve done some good things. We have the Office of School Safety, which I support. We certainly made it harder to get into a school by providing funding to harden the entrances. And then lastly, we put more money into school-based mental health. I think those are good things. I can’t imagine we would, you know, we certainly wouldn’t cut any of those programs. I think we maybe could look at potentially increasing them, but just again, a tragedy, and I want to wait for all the facts before we make any final decisions.

Zac Schultz:
Regarding the Office of School Safety, in the last budget, the Department of Justice would have said that there wasn’t the full amount that they requested to be funded, especially for the tip line. And Governor Evers stepped in with some federal COVID funding. Do you expect to fully fund the tip line this time around?

Robin Vos:
I mean, I’m open to looking at all the details again. I don’t know — I mean, first of all, it has to work its way through the process. I haven’t seen all the budget submissions yet. That has to go through Governor Evers first. So I’m certainly open to looking at it. I want to do things that are going to make a difference. You know, I think the worst thing we can do is try to politicize these things or make it some kind of an ideological lens. If there are things that really will make a difference, of course, we’re going to support those, but to just say we did something and then have it either not work or go in the wrong direction, I also want to be careful about doing that too.

Zac Schultz:
This is a new majority for you. You did lose some members.

Robin Vos:
Yeah.

Zac Schultz:
But you maintained a majority. But it is a new makeup of the Legislature. What does that mean for you going forward?

Robin Vos:
Well, I think the reality is close majorities mean usually less happens. You know, they have this belief that somehow if it’s close, majorities, more is going to happen. I mean, look at the Congress. The closer the majorities, whether it’s Democrats in charge or Republicans, it doesn’t really matter. It just makes it harder to get consensus. Now, the good news for Assembly Republicans is that for 20 years, we’ve operated on a consensus model where most of the time we argue and debate and cajole until we get to a consensus. We’ll do the same thing. I think there’s a lot of priorities that we have for Wisconsin that I’m excited to work on. If there are some of those that can be bipartisan, that’s great. I hope all of them can be. But I also am not going to sacrifice our principles simply because the election had a change.

Zac Schultz:
Democrats seem to think that they’re going to have more say or more input this session. Coming off your last question — your last answer to that, what role do they have to play? As opposed to traditionally, where it was that they wanted to sign on, they could, but they really didn’t have much influence on most legislation.

Robin Vos:
I think it’s probably going to be similar. I would say this, that the freshmen who are coming in are clearly far left, right. Many of them ran in districts as unabashed liberals, which they have every right to. We’re center-right conservatives. So if there are areas we can find common ground and consensus, we are going to be all ears. But the idea that we’re somehow going to spend more than we would have or done a policy that we wouldn’t have supported before, absolutely not. You know, it’s just not going to happen. So I hope we can find consensus. We did last time. I mean, with big, strong majorities, we did, you know, shared revenue package, the Brewers deal, alcohol, literacy, all kinds of big things. Hope we can do those again.

Zac Schultz:
What are you expecting from Governor Evers in his next budget proposal?

Robin Vos:
We’re going to do the budget different than we’ve done before. What happened last time is, of course, Governor Evers submitted it. We threw it out. We did our own budget. We put in reductions in taxes and spending increases. We had the biggest increase in a generation for schools, funding for, you know, nursing homes, all kinds of good things. And the problem was he took almost all the spending increases and vetoed almost all the tax reductions. So the reason that we have the surplus, more than half of it is literally the fact that tax cuts got vetoed and that money is now sitting in Wisconsin’s treasury. We’re not going to spend that on growing government. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to pass our tax cuts first. We’re going to actually find out how much money we have left over. And then that’s what we’re going to invest in government. We’re not going to do it in reverse where we spend on all the things that he wants, and then we don’t get the tax reductions that Wisconsinites deserve.

Zac Schultz:
When do you expect to have those negotiations with the governor on what he will sign as opposed to what he might veto?

Robin Vos:
I mean, I’m happy to do it at any time. I mean, as you know, during December, we had a caucus last week. You know, we’re still kind of finding consensus. We have to elect our leadership. The Democrats just had their caucus. So we’re kind of finding our own consensus first. I feel pretty good about where Assembly Republicans are. Now we have to work with our Senate colleagues to make sure that they’re in a similar place. And then we’ll sit down with the governor in January. But I just want to be really up front about it that, you know, we’re going to have a different budget process. We are not going to have it where we spend a bunch of money, grow the size of government, hoping for tax cuts, and then, you know, like Charlie Brown and the football, have it pulled out at the last minute and then we’re stuck just with the spending increases and no reductions in revenues.

Zac Schultz:
Speaker Vos, thanks for your time.

Robin Vos:
Thanks very much. Merry Christmas.